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Push for Action on Flight Delays

President Bush met with the transportation secretary, Mary Peters, and the acting head of the F.A.A., Bobby Sturgell.Credit
Stephen Crowley/The New York Times

WASHINGTON, Sept. 27 — After the worst summer of airline delays on record, President Bush on Thursday ordered transportation officials to work with airline executives to reduce delays in the nation’s overcrowded airspaces, beginning in New York.

White House officials said they were considering options like capping the number of flights and allowing airports to charge higher fees to airlines for landing at the busiest times of the day. The administration is also considering rules that would require airlines to provide passengers with more information about frequently delayed flights and give more compensation to travelers who are bumped from flights.

“We’ve got a problem, we understand there’s a problem, and we’re going to address the problem,” President Bush said after calling Mary E. Peters, the secretary of transportation, and aviation officials to the Oval Office for a well-publicized meeting.

The president also said airlines should treat passengers better when delays occur. “There’s a lot of anger amongst our citizens about the fact that, you know, they’re just not being treated right,” Mr. Bush said. Some, he said, have been subjected to “egregious behavior.”

Although the White House made clear that it preferred that airlines voluntarily reduce congestion at the most crowded airports, it warned that mandatory rules might be imposed if the airlines did not act on their own.

Airlines have been unable to develop solutions to congestion problems, which are steadily growing worse. As public frustration grows, a consumer advocacy movement has been building and state and local governments have become involved. And Congress is again considering “passenger rights” measures.

The transportation secretary, Ms. Peters, told reporters that air travelers “are cranky, and they have good reason to be.”

She and Bobby Sturgell, the acting head of the Federal Aviation Administration, said they would convene an advisory group of airline executives, airports, corporate aviation interests and consumer groups to work out a plan by December to cut traffic at Kennedy International Airport in New York.

Failing that, Ms. Peters warned, the alternative might be to “return to the days of government-regulated flights and limited competition.” The goal is to have improvements in place by the beginning of next summer.

One-third of the nation’s air traffic passes through the New York region, and three-fourths of the chronic delays around the country can be traced to delays in New York.

Ms. Peters also said the government would propose raising compensation for “bumped passengers” to $624, from $200, and would review whether the Transportation Department’s complaint division was adequate.

Tales of passengers being stranded on tarmacs for hours have become legion. One day last December, 67 American Airlines flights were stuck on the tarmac for three hours or more. In February, nine planeloads of JetBlue Airways passengers were stranded on the tarmac for six hours or more when an ice storm hit New York.

Some critics voiced skepticism that federal officials could curb the competitive instincts of airlines eager to make profits after years of record losses and bankruptcies. The policies being weighed by the administration could produce fewer flights and higher fares. “Perversely, this is good for the airlines,” Roger E. King, an industry analyst at CreditSights, noted in a report.

Because of antitrust laws, airlines are barred from meeting on their own to agree to limit flights, but solving the problem requires joint action. One government official pointed out that cutting flights, perhaps by flying one large plane instead of two smaller ones, would help but that “there’s no incentive if you don’t have some assurance your competitors won’t take advantage of what you’ve just left behind” by adding flights of their own.

One idea that Ms. Peters said the advisory group would consider is variable landing fees, to encourage airlines to switch to off-peak times. But aviation experts point out that Kennedy is near capacity for most of the day, and the landing fees now are small relative to the operating costs of a plane — about $800 for a large plane like a Boeing 737, often far less than the price of a single full-fare ticket.

The airline industry seemed receptive to the president’s initiatives, but most executives said they would reserve judgment until they had more details. At the Transportation Department, dozens of airline executives and other industry officials met with Ms. Peters and Mr. Sturgell of the F.A.A. before they went to the White House. “The rest of us sat and talked for two hours” to the staff of the Transportation Department, said W. Douglas Parker, chief executive of US Airways. “What they described sounded encouraging.”

Still, Mr. Parker said, “there was significant push-back in the room” on the idea of auctioning off landing rights or pricing them according to congestion.

James C. May, the president of the Air Transport Association, the carriers’ trade organization, said the group “appreciates the involvement of the White House and the D.O.T. in what is becoming an increasingly serious national crisis of flight delays.” But the group is opposed to congestion pricing, he said.

Democrats in Congress and some governors were quick to say the administration should have acted sooner. “The industry itself recognizes it’s got a problem of a magnitude that the hands-off, head-in-the-sand approach of this administration isn’t serving them well,” said Peter A. DeFazio, Democrat of Oregon, the chairman of the House aviation subcommittee.

Gov. Eliot Spitzer of New York said in an interview Thursday that last month he signed a state law, known as a passengers’ bill of rights, because of inaction at the federal level.

Officials in New Jersey have been considering their own passenger-protection legislation. Some airline industry officials have worried that they could face a patchwork of varied regulations across the country.

“They’re sending us a message,” Ron Ricks, an executive vice president at Southwest Airlines, said of the states. Though he and others say federal laws pre-empt states’ regulations for airlines, “that doesn’t mean it’s not important; it would not be prudent to ignore the message.”

Even some of the Bush administration’s harshest critics on aviation policy were happy to see the president stepping in. “It’s a good thing the White House is finally starting to focus on it,” said Paul Hudson, who heads the Aviation Consumer Action Project, which is affiliated with Ralph Nader.